The liquid coffee creamer is one of the most widely used unit of use packages in the world, the US alone using some 15 billion annually. It is also probably one of the most poorly conceived and designed for its purpose, a little thin walled flexible plastic bucket generally made of high impact polystyrene (HIPS) with a peel-off lid. Its purpose being to safely contain cream up to the point of use, be readily opened by the user, deliver the cream to the coffee and finally to be set safely down. To use it the end user must have the manual dexterity to do so, but who may be aged, infirm, arthritic, not dexterous or just not paying full attention to this annoying little task. It must finally be poured into the awaiting coffee, not so easy in a moving vehicle, train or plane etc. and finally set down. As is evident, the product contained whether actual cream or some man-made whitening agent is of relatively low viscosity. Both hands are needed to open the little flexible bucket which has a peel-off lid.
This operation, which requires that the bucket be held firmly by squeezing it, can cause inadvertent spilling or squirting of the low viscosity cream product, unfortunately, on the user as often as not. Assuming this peeling operation is successfully accomplished. the cream must be poured into the coffee and then set down. These little buckets often have small bases and invariably contain unused cream. They are easily knocked over, again spilling the product on the table, tray or user.
They have a further disadvantage in that the expensive peel-off lid is usually made of a foil-plastic combination. It is rarely ever completely peeled off. Should recycling become necessary each of these lids which are not recyclable, would have to be peeled from each creamer manually.
As noted above, in order to peel back the lid the little bucket most be firmly grasped. To grasp the lid firmly, the bucket and particularly its rim must have structural integrity and strength. This is accomplished by using thick material on the order of 20-27.5 mils of high impact polystyrene (HIPS). The lid must also have strength to peel it away. In most cases a foil/polyester/peelable adhesive lamination is used. This thin little combination often represents one third to one half the material cost of the package.
In this highly competitive field of large volume unit-of-use packaging there are 5 factors which affect the success of any given unit. They are: 1. Cost; 2. Ease of use; 3. Resistance to accidental opening or spilling; 4. Appearance; and 5. Environmental impact.
As previously mentioned, one of the most visible forms of this unit packaging is the coffee creamer. This little bucket shaped package with its tab operated peel-off lid and massive sales volume (15 to 20 billion annually in the U.S.A. alone) is relatively expensive, difficult to use, prone to accidental spilling and has a negative environmental impact and a neutral appearance. It fails four of the five criteria for success but, as the saying goes, it's the only kid on the block.
One purpose of this invention is to overcome these severe shortcomings and make it less expensive, easy to use, spill resistant and environmentally improved. While its appearance will still remain neutral, users may look on it with pleasure since its so user friendly and spill resistant.
Peeling the lid off requires a surprising amount of force and to resist such force on the order of 21 mils of thermoformable plastic (HIPS) film stock is generally required for the lower pocket member, particularly its rim, while a tough plastic-foil plus a layer of strong but peelable adhesive is required for the peel-off lid. Needless to say the plastic container formation has to also resist squeezing while the lid is peeled off or the product will squirt out of the cup.
With approximately 50 billion creamers annually sold worldwide one can imagine the capital investment that would have to be made to displace existing production equipment. The German made Robert Bosch aseptic creamer machine which sells for some $2,000,000 produces 80,000 units per hour. Aseptic creamers are desirable in many parts of the world and are even used in the U.S.A. even though our domestic refrigeration systems and refrigerated delivery ability are far superior to those in all countries outside the U.S.A. Displacement of these existing machines would likely be very difficult, very costly and therefore resisted since that cost has to be factored into the selling price of the creamers.